Porn Surfing 101 - Paysite Content - Video

Exclusive video is by far the most popular type of content on any pay site. All of the best sites offer exclusive video; others only offer "plug-in" or leased content provided by another porn production company; the same plug-in content is therefore available on many different sites.

Much of the time you get a lot more than just sex in the videos;  there are often video interviews with the guys before they get into the sex, so you get more of a feel of their personality and background. Videos are usually between 10 and 20 minutes long and can be of superb quality -- or absolute crap.

Stream or Download?

Most pay sites offer two types of video: streams and downloads.

True streaming video allows you to watch the video as it is "streamed" from the porn site to your computer. With true streaming video you can jump back and forth to any part of the video as soon as it starts to play. Streaming video does not save on your computer for future playback.

However most video that is called "streaming" these days is actually a "progressive download"; with progressive downloads the video with start to play for you from the beginning as it downloads the rest of the file to your computer's Temp folder. Usually you cannot skip forward or back within the video until that part of the video has downloaded; sometimes you cannot skip forward or back until the entire download is complete, which usually takes a few minutes.

Under ideal conditions streaming video is clear and continuous, but top of the line technology must be used to create, send and receive the video. Usually, downloaded videos provide superior playback.

Downloaded video saves a large file to your computer. You must wait for the video to completely download before watching it. This can take several minutes because they can be very large files.

Most pay sites allow you to keep and view downloaded video files as long as you like; others use Digital Rights Management technology to license the video so that you have access to it for only a designated period, sometimes only for as long as you are a paying member of the site, but more often for the life of the computer.

Video Formats

There are a number of different formats for Web video, including:

Windows Media (WMV), usually played with the Windows Media Player 

MPEG-4 (MP4, M4V), which will play with the Windows Media Player and the QuickTime Player

QuickTime (MOV), usually played with the QuickTime Player

Flash, streaming video.

Silverlight, streaming video.

You may also occasionally find video offered in outmoded formats such as DivX, AVI or Real Media.

New free versions of the video players are released regularly. Like any new version of software it is best to way a few months after a new release before installing it so that the bugs can be worked out. Otherwise you may have some trouble playing the video on membership sites.

Mac Compatible Video

Mac users sometimes have trouble playing video formats that are designed for a Windows world. In particular, Windows Media video that uses digital rights management (DRM) will not work on a Mac system, which is why many sites offer alternatives, or have dropped DRM. If you are a Mac user you can play non-DRM Windows Media files in your Quicktime Player by installing the free Flip4Mac plug-in.

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